I just wanted to thank all of you who wished me well on my move to Boston. In the world of food blogging, it’s really quite rare that people will actually read what you write, so I’m thankful to those that take the time to read my blurbs. While many of you might be a bunch of internet strangers, I appreciate the generosity & support you’ve shown me as my blog & academic career continue to move forward. Here are a bunch of pictures of food I ate &/or made that I forgot to put up. For more posts on pictures of food I ate, explore my Foodie Fridays category.

I have a test today, so I prepared a Musical Monday for all of you ahead of time. Mellifluous is the third mix I’ve made since I started Musical Mondays & is suitable for female audiences since, well, everyone who sings is a woman. It doesn’t mean a man can’t enjoy it, but it’s obvious that more likely than not, a woman would find this more appealing. This playlist features voices from contemporary female artists, with an upbeat start that transitions to a more mellow, sleepy half. It’s a great playlist for background noise while working, preparing for bed & falling asleep to it, or for one of those days you just feel like some easy listening. Hopefully this mix will help you discover new songs, artists, &/or genres so ladies, I hope you enjoy it.

In the 4 years I’ve been a Pescetarian, I’ve gotten a lot of inquisitive looks & on the more extreme end, antagonized for choosing not to eat land creatures as if I’ve somehow insulted these individuals’ very being because I don’t eat cows. Since the social norm is to consume meat, those of us that have special diets often get harassed for not eating like the rest of society. Not only is it annoying to deal with, it’s incredibly disrespectful to those of us that choose not to eat the popular way society does. If you’re going to try to mock our way of living, you might as well do it intelligently instead of immaturely, e.g., “but meat is so tasty; lol you’re missing out lol more meat for me lol. lol. lol. lolol.” Choosing to cut meat out of my diet is not due to the tastiness of said land creatures, so don’t assume my tastebuds are dysfunctional. I can appreciate a fine plate of beef tartare as much as any bovine connoisseur, but why I choose not to is environmental, ethical, & political. This doesn’t mean that I think consuming seafood is exemplary because it isn’t – I see it as choosing the lesser of two evils, so to speak.

Without even asking me what it is I eat or how often I eat what I eat, people just plunge into the, “well, aren’t you just going to get mercury poisoning?” question as if their consumption of fast food isn’t going to kill them first. Although this post is going to have tons of pictures of fish, it doesn’t mean that I consume seafood everyday. I believe in eating a mostly vegetarian diet & do my best to consume seafood that has low mercury content such as catfish, clams, crab, tilapia, octopus, oysters, & scallops. If you’re considering becoming a Pescetarian or if you’re obsessed with seafood, please make sure you check the mercury levels of your favorite seafood before you think you can consume it all without consequences. As much as I love Chilean Seabass, it’s a fish that’s endangered, so try not to order it. If you want to consume it in the future, you have to make sure it doesn’t die out now. It’s good to mix up what you normally eat with something new. Try having a meat-free day & challenge your culinary skills. You may just delightfully surprise yourself! Okay, now for a huge food dump.

Cloudburst is the second mix I put together for my ongoing filler series: Musical Mondays! This mix is much more upbeat than the last one, but not too progressive. This mix is great for background music while you search the internet, play video games, or walking to school. Each mix has its own theme & this mix’s theme is upbeat electro. I hope those that like the genres I drew from will like this mix. I’ve gotten some positive feedback from a few friends, so here’s to hoping it’s also your cup of tea. I annoyingly put it on “autoplay” since most people don’t click things I link like my videos, so now y’all can be annoyed with this mysterious palatable music seeping from your speakers until you figure out it’s because of me. Sorry, not sorry.

You know how sometimes you want to update your website, but you really have no idea what to write about? No? Before I evolved TB to center around recipes, I used to post pictures everyday (sort of) without anything more than a simple caption of what your eyeballs were glancing at. Now that I’m forcing myself to write something witty & interesting with every post, I can no longer do food photo dumps without some purpose. This has led to a bunch of my photos sitting on my computer from last year & beyond, unseen by my regular visitors. Well, one of my solutions is to simply create a new series that will be more specific to an all encompassing theme. Foodie Fridays will be my food dump days, so I guess there might not be a real point to any of these future posts other than to tell you about some restaurants, grocery stores, or how good/bad/mediocre the food I consumed was. Since not too many people visit a food blog to read anything, Foodie Fridays will fully appreciate the, “wow, this post is making me hungry & my desk has accumulated some drool from my mouth,” comments more than ever!